Want to vote in St. Lawrence County? Unregistered voters have until Friday to get on rolls

Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - 9:03 am

By CRAIG FREILICH

If you want to vote in the election Nov. 2, you have to be registered, and if you’re not on the rolls, the deadline to get there is Friday.

Pundits don’t expect the same kind of voter turnout as in a presidential election year, but the contests between County Clerk Patty Ritchie and state Sen. Darrel Aubertine for his Senate seat, and between Matt Doheny and Rep. Bill Owens for the 23rd Congressional District seat are drawing considerable attention.

If you’re not sure whether you’re registered to vote, you can call the Board of Elections at 379-2202. If you know you’re not registered, you have until Friday, Oct. 8, to do something about it.

To register, visit the Board of Elections office on Court Street in Canton, show your driver’s license or provide the last digits of your Social Security number, and get an application. You can fill it out there and hand it in. Or you can mail it in, but it has to postmarked by Oct. 8.

To register, you have to be a U.S, citizen, 18 or older by the end of the year, not in jail or on parole for a felony, and not claim the right to vote anyplace else. To vote, you must have been registered for at least 25 days before the election, and have turned 18 before Election Day.

Those who have moved since they last voted or who want to change party affiliation must re-register by Oct. 8.

Once that’s done, the Board of Elections will send you a card confirming your registration and telling you where you will vote.

When you get to the polls, “your signature from the application will have been loaded into the poll book for comparison when you arrive at the polls,” and you show your ID, to verify that you are the voter in the book, according to Deputy Democratic Elections Commissioner Jeff Farrell.